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About Tuesday Night: The Real Pity of this Election

Now that this long slog of a muddy election is finished and I’ve taken the time to have a stiff drink and a warm bath, I can begin to look at this election season with some dispassionate objectivity. After all the ads, the fliers and the radio spots; after the noise, the charges, the denials and distortions, I can see more clearly the two human beings who ran against each other. In the heat of battle they did not exactly appeal to our better angels. The partisanship was fierce and the rhetoric violently macho: “If they bring a knife, we bring a gun…”

Then Tuesday night, early on our “Left Coast,” came the concession speech of Mitt Romney and the victory speech of Barack Obama. They both filled me with regret. These were the two best, most articulate, sensible and really patriotic speeches of the season. Both were gracious, graceful and seemingly sincere. Each exuded mutual respect and hope for bi-partisan cooperation in healing our nation’s wounds and breaching our philosophical divide.

Romney led off, and while some criticized him for waiting over an hour after the election was called by all the media (even Fox), he was great and generous. He was fluent, eloquent and the most likable and approachable that I’ve seen him. And I wondered aloud, “Where was this guy during the campaign?”

It brought to mind the line in Macbeth (Act I, scene 3) when Duncan reports on the death of Cawdor, “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it.” Well much the same could be said of Romney. Nothing became his political career like the leaving of it. Had this Romney been allowed to campaign, he might well have been elected.

Instead, like Al Gore, Romney never found a sense of authenticity to share. He was spun, handled and polished; he was coached, protected and niche marketed till no one knew his core beliefs or had a sense of what he would actually do if elected. Would he be the moderate governor of Massachusetts or the “severe conservative” he claimed to be? Could he really have sincerely moved from a pro-choice, gay friendly and early green enemy of coal to his pre-convention positions that were exactly the opposite? One core principle epiphany is credible but three look opportunistic.

For as ruthless as he was in winning the primaries and as hard-line as he marketed himself to the Tea Party, on election night, he seemed for the first time (at least to me) warm and real. Without the pressure to try to appeal to people for votes, he could be a person. And the irony is that this seems to be a pretty good person.

As for Obama’s victory speech, well I really loved it. I was moved by its call for unity and cooperation. I welcomed his embrace of Romney and his family and the thought that they would sit down together for the good of the nation is appealing. The optics would be tremendous. And I don’t mean that cynically or for the benefit of the president. I mean it for the healing of the nation. This would be more important than even the photo-ops with Gov Christie.

I loved everything he said. Like Romney’s concession speech, I thought it was his best speech of the campaign. In fact, it may have been his best speech since he introduced himself to the nation in 2004 at the Democratic convention. It is just a shame that this came after it was all over. It is also a shame that it came at 10:45 pm PST and 1:45 am EST. It is a shame because not as many heard it live. And it was way too long for that late hour. It was a primetime speech delivered far too late. Could that speech have been delivered during the actual campaign?

Part of the problem is the process where both parties sling mud and paint with excreta. But part of the problem is also personal. Our candidates accept the strictures imposed by the professionals. They contract with them not to be themselves and to banish any vulnerability or spontaneity from their public personas.

For Romney, for Obama and for our nation it is really a shame that the calls for bi-partisanship, cooperation and respect come at the end and not in the campaign itself. It is a shame that our candidates do not trust us with the gift of their true plans, character and dreams. It might not work. We might turn away from truth. But it seems we’ll never know, since no one has the guts to try it till it’s too late. Truly a pity.

When Gerald Ford lost to Jimmy Carter, his concession speech was so moving, it was said if he had shown such elan during the campaign, he would have been elected. It is a shame such people as Ford and Romney are not elected to the highest office. Of course, they have ideas that would work and that is not acceptable to those with their hands out or those pretending to be an ostrich.